The Virtues of Automated Vehicle Safety - Mapping Vehicle Safety Approaches to Their Underlying Ethical Frameworks

The safety of automated vehicles is principally a question of ethics. As a result, an understanding of the ethical frameworks that underlie different regulatory, legal and engineering approaches to vehicle safety can help to pinpoint potential challenges. Approaches that stem from deontological thinking can create a trap by requiring an exhaustive set of rules. In contrast, approaches that take a consequentialist perspective can create a perceived need to find an optimal solution. A framework based on virtue ethics, as developed further in this paper, avoids both of these traps, relying on engineering judgement and moral wisdom to extrapolate from core virtues towards practical solutions.